Malwa

this fruity tea is not very complex, it has a sweetness combined with a tangy hibiscus flavour , very nice when sweetened.

Chokeberries with raspberries. Interesting combination, but as Poles like Aronia (lots of fruit teas with those berries) it is probably good. Cool that it really includes both berries which are expected to be in and not in small quantity. Min. 40 % of aronia and min. 6 % of raspberry. It will be probably very aromatic tea.

It is! And really dark one. Of course dark not in aromas! How should dark smell like afterall? Chokeberries, aka aronia, it is going to be tart probably, but there are raspberries which are rather sweet berries. Elderberries are something in the middle. I steeped it for long (they suggest 8-10 minutes) so I did something like that. I have not even checked the time.

Colour, though it is in mug, is very dark. Of course it smells after all those berries.
But in taste? It is bit watery with tartness by aronia and elderberries. Not much from raspberries, though they were well present in dry aroma.

It is rather “just okay” caffeine-free alternative.

It’s all go this morning with the arrival of an engineer that’s going to fit our new boiler. Involves knocking a hole in the wall to fit an extractor fan, not keen on the idea of the whole but nothing I can do about that.

This tea was from my mum for Christmas, another Polish shop find I believe. Sour cherry sounds nice, I don’t do fruit tea often but I do love cherries.

The raw bags smell like natural cherry with a slight herbalness. Sweet yet sour at the same time. Rather nice actually.

Once steeped it’s dark red and has a herbal scent, stronger than it’s raw form, and the cherry is replaced with a sour flowers.

There is no way to delicately dance about with flavour notes….this tastes like hibiscus, pure hibiscus. The wonderful cherry scent has been completely lost in taste and replaced with a sour, tart and dry hibiscus. Even the husband said “This tea’s not great” and he usually doesn’t mind what he drinks. You could argue that it leaves a light cherry after taste but it’s so dry that it’s too hard to tell for certain.

Such a shame, had high hopes for this considering the raw bag smelled so nice. Oh well.

I wanted so much to like this tea because the dry tea smells awesome like fresh juicy pineapple stored next to a sharp dried fruit, but in the end it is ruined by its base tea. I’ve tried this tea hot brewed at low temperatures and short steeps and cold brewed for just over 4 hours and the result is the same; the tea is ruined by its bitter base.

Ignoring that the cold brew scent is of a nice and juicy and a little bit floral pineapple. The better way to enjoy this tea is cold brewed, in this way the bitter notes of the base are tempered a bit by the sweetness and green notes drawn out of the tea, but even at 4 hours, the bitterness is there.otherwise the pineapple taste is actually quite authentic and nice. Oh well this is telling me that I should stick to the big active , bastek and perhaps Lloyd greens at the Polish store though I haven’t tried biofx’s greens.

I’ll stick to cold brewing this tea for the time being.

a nice lemmony tasting ginger tea :)

a kind friend gifted me a bunch of tea recently, including this one. i’m not big on herb/fruit teas, but this one is quite sunny & soothing. i debated adding sweetener, such as honey & i think next time i’ll do so. i brewed for 8 minutes & found the tea, as i tend to with fruit teas, a tad astringent. i can’t taste the ginger per se, but there’s a ginger effect, a bit of spice hitting the tongue. it’s a lively tea. perfect for an afternoon pick me up.

The cherry taste is there in this tea but I think I had too much hibiscus in my scoop, as this cup tastes too sour even with sugar. I can smell cherry, and a sweet berry scent, part of the smell references cream soda and cherry popsicles, but the taste is hidden by the sour aspects of this tea (ie hibiscus, rosehips, red currants). The sweet fruit accents become more apparent in the tea as it cools as a slightly candyish cherry taste ( similar to the notes found in cherry scented green tea), leaving a bright fruit note. However this taste is still buried underneath the sour notes. I will try this tea again after removing some of the hibiscus and try it cold brewed to try to bring out the cherry notes and reduce the sour notes. It is supposed to be a sour cherry tea but as it is this brewing was so sour that this over shadowed all of the other flavours.

Bought this on impulse today purely because… well, Melissa plant? It’s got my name on it! (spelt differently but! still!)

Melissa or melisse is a lemon balm herb, I think, so named because it attracts honeybees (melissa in Greek) so. . . it’s a herbal tea, that’s about it.

Didn’t brew it for as long as I should have done but then I have this terrible habit of judging a brew by its colour. I tend to freak out if my peppermint tea starts getting brown in colour so I popped the teabag out after maybe three minutes…

It tastes a little… well, herb-y? But also earthy in a way that reminds me of pu-erh. Earthy, with a mellow, warm tea-y taste, and a little bit of citrus. I think it must smell more lemony than it tastes.

Interesting to try my namesake, nonetheless!

A Polish herbal tea, winter fruit-based, hence the name ‘Winter Fantasy’ – blends apple, hibiscus, berries, star anise, cinammon, and so forth. This was the stringless bag version.
I happened upon it at my local Baltic gift store, they also sell Malwa blends in ‘loose-leaf’ though they’re all tisanes. This gift store also sells this on line, but you might have trouble finding it other places since it tends to be more of a novelty. Even still, at $3.99 at an import store, it was worth the purchase simply to try it.

The taste? I wasn’t expecting to be excited about it, but it surprised me. There’s not enough hibiscus to overpower things, and it’s got both citrus and spice that come through. Nothing like the American bagged herbal blends I’ve tried in past. It calls for an 8-minute steeping time, which I loyally adhered to, and yet nothing tasted overdone. It was a spicy, almost grapefruit-like evening sip. Something for certain American herbals to aspire to.

More about how I found it and pics of the ‘lebkuchen’ I enjoyed it with on my full blog post: http://t.co/hZaVpzk3